A Wormhole to the Galaxy's Only Solitary Star
by Toph4ever
Summary: A world where Star and Marco didn't meet until the time of the most recent episodes' events (Mild S4 Spoilers). They're 16, miserable, and on a collision course through space-time, bound by forces that transcend magic and logic. Each is exactly what the other needs, but they'll need to work through 2 more years' worth of issues to be anything more than strangers. M for posterity.
1. CH001

**A/N: Hi everyone, long time no write. I just saw the new Star Vs episodes recently, and it inspired me to put pen to paper again. My last work of prose was pretty, purple garbage, and I wasn't terribly proud of it. But, I like how this one turned out and i want to continue it and focus on shorter, quality chapters. I always write 10K words in a sitting and I loose track of anything worth saying part way through, so I want to limit myself more with this and do a bit more proof-read and polish on it. My last story, which shall remain a one-shot, was titled the same as this one. I have re-titled it, because I like the title "A Wormhole to the Galaxy's Only Solitary Star," and want to do it justice. I feel like the new episodes have given me good fodder for that. Anyway, without further ado, please enjoy chapter 1.**

**Edit: The will of the people has been heard. Obtuse metaphor and "Pretentious Prose" are dead. Direct progression and immediate description are our new King and Queen, long may they reign! **

**All joking aside though, expect more dialogue and straightforward depiction going forward. I will attempt to dial the mauve back and let the story bleed through.**

**However, I'm really, _REALLY _good at getting lost in the weeds, so please: Keep me honest, involve yourselves, and provide constructive criticism. **

**Let's go on an adventure together.**

**T4E out.**

**CH001: The Thing is, No One Really Knows Where Tumbleweeds Go.**

_In this world there exist myriad concepts sought by every living thing with enough of a mind to abstract them. Many exist by virtue of the collective intelligence created by communication, of varying complexity and degree of success, between organisms. All but the most important._

_These, paradoxically, exist in defiance of description. Most abstractions are bubbles, blown full with intent and carried by wind, to pop in the ears of those who can appreciate their nuance. However precious few collapse, obstinately, the instant they feel the first ticklings of a breath, as though in fear of the height, and gravity, their intended journeys would implicate; their nature implies that an inborn fragility ought to belie their bashfulness. Yet, inexplicably, they are found everywhere; weeds springing from between cobbles, inherent to the stepwise evolution of intelligence. Different sects of life have paved this path to different extents, and with varying degrees of success, but none with the brash rapidity of the human animal._

_Certain feelings are older than time, growing comfortably at the weathered roots of these highways. Hunger, pain, lust, the simple positives and negatives; all of which have long since transcended simple weed-status and shade our beginnings as trees, high and broad and universal spurs to our every action. The further you walk down each road, however, the more the scale of those thorny weeds declines until you approach strange, stunted seedlings tearing at the earth on its the bleeding edge, fiercely staring down the unknown beyond. These feelings, which are geologically infantile and deeply human, pulse with the throbbing of hearts and sing with the static of a shiver._

_We assign them words, and each one of us may, at any time, stoop from the flurry of bubbles whizzing past our heads to brush their leaves or prick a finger on their thorns and feel, deeply and intensely, the particular poisons they carry. We blow more bubbles as we hunch, whispering their names as though repetition could possibly lend them meaning. But four letter sounds like 'LOVE' and 'HATE,' even the more complex varietals like 'ANXIETY' and "INFATUATION,' all sound like a curse before an altar, no matter how tenderly we whisper them._

But what the hell did Marco Diaz know about plants, anyway?

He knew they certainly seemed to grow all around him in the beating California sun, defiant as a heartbeat, and that they seemed perfectly content to continue doing so, ignorant of the philosophical sediment sifting through the wrinkles of his brain. Though he was sure if they could hear his inner monologue they would wilt from second-hand embarrassment. He raked his gaze sharply, left to right, before crossing a momentarily parted river of surely near-molten metal, screaming the sun's fury back at it, high into a delfts blauw sky.

Hands, stallions burdened with absence and straining against the tethers binding them to it, pulled him across the blacktop, scarlet blinders obscuring their vision. He taunted the bullish heat with a familiar red hoodie, even in the summer's dog days, as though it had begun to pad flesh around the bones of metaphor.

The flow closed in once more behind him as his back foot forsook asphalt for concrete, and a three-eyed Moses suspended not-so-high above in the sky lowered its staff, having seen its people through the red.

Traffic lights had to be the most sympathetic part of the whole urban experience. They existed solely to facilitate the transit of him, and people like him, who found themselves in absence of one of those burning flecks that had begun to float along again, borne past like so much ash in the slag which surged behind him, filling empty space he had left. He turned, briefly, to watch it go.

The swelter roared silently, and the river replied without such courtesy, fully underway by the time his eyes met it. Commuters on their way home at the end of a no doubt sweaty day. He averted his gaze skyward, forfeiting a one-sided staring contest, and his mind stooped to prick an incorporeal finger once more. An image as vivid as the hollow clap of his shoes echoing off the brick beside him as he started off down the sidewalk bloomed in his mind. A silhouette bathed in teal and ochre; a sunset through stained glass.

He bid his mind to stop, to give him some peace from the spectre, to allow him just once to out-pace it, but it pressed harder into the needle, drawing blood. Hormones, the hateful swear words of the endocrine system, flooded his teenage brain; the light flared, igniting coarse fire along every sparkling curve of the stained, porcelain body he now saw - felt - in the impossible detail of renaissance sculpture. Every nuance imagined vividly, from perfect hips to hair whose color seemed to match the radiance he immediately understood to emanate from within, rather than behind, her. Such fine work belonged on a pedestal, but certainly he of all people wasn't the one worthy of putting her there. He still couldn't manage to pick her up with words, let alone his quaking hands.

He shoved them further into his pockets and dug the nail of his thumb into the pad of his index finger, as though drawing blood in actuality might turn his brain off of its figurative act. The metaphor was lost on the hunk of grey matter, but the pain sent a clear message, and the scene before him stretched and snapped like lightning across a hundred-mile gap, returning to him the towering cumulonimbus clouds that sulked towards Echo Creek from the sea.

They seemed to borrow not entirely undue regality from the angle and elevation of the hill he trudged down; it juxtaposed them against a toy-model town in the middle-distance, and painted them across the split-blue canvas before him with the scale and pomp of a frame from a Ghibli production. Dark and grumbling, but beautiful, intimidating, and indomitable. All while being intangible. How he envied clouds.

Sixteen was a shitty year. Cut it forward, backward, julienne it, no matter how you sliced it, it sucked. It was the year you were just tall enough to begin peeking over the emerald curtain obscuring the scale of human atrocity, but not yet so tall as to see the consequences rendered at its feet. You began to shoulder that weight, society, and most people rejoiced as they felt it begin to settle against their backs.

Most children were plough horses, eager at their first chance to strain against a load.

Marco was acutely aware that his farmhand was lowering the till strategically, and the length of it he knew would eventually meet with earth only served to fill him with dread at every rearward glance. Though, the added burden of his perception of a wasted youth certainly didn't lighten the load.

Safest had always been his superlative. Though, recently, the connotation of the word had soured for him. Safe, to him, had by and large meant avoiding unnecessary risks, but he had begun to wonder at his own definition of unnecessary. Was finally mustering the sack to say two words to the object of his puberty-long infatuation, "unnecessary"? Was doing much of anything these days with his childhood friends, "unnecessary"? The hill bottomed out in time with his heart, and he the distant salinity of the ocean air wafting in soured his mood further. He'd gone too far again, lost in thought. He glared once more at the infuriatingly indifferent clouds on the horizon and peeled off laterally into a park that often found itself the final destination of his sky-gazing strolls.

Well shaded, and complete with a well-kempt graveyard near its rear entrance, it provided the perfect place to cool off in every sense, and escape the oppressive summer sun. Marco dropped beneath a favourite tree, a sprawling walnut, feeling as heavy and mushy as the fruits he saw littering the ground around him. A deep sigh, mixed with equal parts contentment and resignation, escaped his lips. Every day seemed to end like this lately, and there was no way he'd make it home before dark now. He relaxed into the tree's welcoming bark as the shadows around him cept longer and time seemed all at once to speed up and slow down in that way it only does when you are in the process of nodding off. Emotionally and physically exhausted, now that he was finally seated, he reasoned that a short nap under the sun would do no harm.

He awoke, some time later, to furious wind. It immediately occurred to him that the clouds from before must be irritated with his trespass beneath their sky and then, waking more fully thanks to the buffeting of the sand and leaves stampeding past his head, it occurred to him how ridiculous a notion that was. He shook the grog from his mind as he rose to his feet, creaking in sync to the tree behind him. As he did, a series of images from the time between the moments of his eyes closing and reopening flashed before him, too quick to parse in detail.

A classroom, the understanding that someone in the room wasn't wearing pants, anxiety wrought from the burden of knowledge and an inexplicable inability to correct the bottomless party, mixed with their own panic. Twisting metal, a shriek like splitting earth, the mangled corpses of two cars in an intersection, pain that was not his own, but had claimed squatter's rights in his head. A flayed carcass, and the distant singing of burns across an endless body, each and every hair dotting its perimeter demarcating the boundaries of an acre plot of flesh, sprouting nerve endings like turnips.

Bile splashed the bottom of his esophagus as everything within him clenched at the memory. They were the feelings of someone deeply tortured. Less coherent events and visions and more representations of turmoil given narrative by his mind, though he struggled both to divorce the concepts and to reason out how they'd wound up within him.

Driven to his feet by the squall and to the edge of tension by the events within him, and unbearable urge to help someone whose identity he had no means of divining blossomed. He took off running without so much as a tender thought for the tree which had sheltered him thus far from the storm he saw explode into full view above the canopy of isolated greenery. The previously stoic and distant cumulonimbi had grown swollen and anguished; they blotted out the sky with their hulking backs as they skulked towards the shores of Echo Creek and stippled the ocean surface a mile out and with endless latitude beneath them. He turned from them and allowed his urges to both flee danger and help that unknown party threatened by it to mix in a two part rocket fuel in his gut, overcome the inertia of his awe, and carry him up the hill and away from the approaching downpour as fast as humanly possible.

Flashes of lightning cast the sickly shadows of lampposts and stop signs on brick walls before him in the green dusk as he continued back the way he'd come. The harassment of thunder and the threat of a dousing carried him further than the air in his lungs might have usually allowed, and within the space of what seemed like moments he saw a familiar sign looming out of the asphalt before him. On autopilot and fumes he sprinted the last stretch to the door, mind still wiped blank by a cocktail of runner's high and anxiety, and pounded.

"Britta's Tacos, 'fraid we're closed for the storm." A voice from within emphatically sounded.

"Sensei, it's me!" Marco screamed, battling for decibels with the din around him, "Let me in!"

The wind swung the door open suddenly enough to knock Marco off his balance, but the sturdy green frame allowed him to keep his feet. A hulking, backlit figure stood before him, blocking his path inside with a concerned look on his face.

"Diaz?" He enquired, "What the hell are you doing out in this?"

Marco briefly explained himself, leaving the part about the cryptic and gut-wrenching dream out, along with his other fantasies. "I'll never make it home before it starts coming down." He pleaded. "Mind if I wait it out with you?"

"If I say no you'll probably just sprint all the way home, and if you ran all the way here from the park I have a feeling if I do I'm going to be seeing your name in the paper tomorrow, and not in a good way." He replied. "You've got endurance in the dojo, but I know what your cardio's like Diaz."

Marco chuckled despondently as the figure stepped aside to let him pass, and he stepped into the fragrant interior of the taco shack.

"I have to finish closing up for the day and cleaning if you want to wait in the back, Diaz," He called over his shoulder. "I can give you a lift home once I'm done."

"I can help!" Marco protested, starting after him.

"Not when you aren't getting paid, kid, I could get fired just for having non-employees back here. Go chill for a bit."

Marco stopped short, and seeing that Sensei wasn't turning around to offer him a chance at rebuttal, he made his way to the back of the shack and sat down on a stout, wooden tortilla crate. The sounds of clattering dishes and bins being scraped entertained him for a few minutes, but as his heart rate slowed and his breathing stabilized he began to look around the interior of the antiquated building and take in the splendor. He had been coming to the place for years, but had never set foot in the back rooms before.

The color scheme of the walls and furnishings dated the last interior update to the early 80's if he were being realistic, and the 90's if he were generous, however what he saw of the electrical and plumbing peeking between studs on normally out-of-sight surfaces betrayed more advanced age. He took it all in with reverence for a few moments before his eyes alighted on a teal door unlike the rest.

Bored and curious all at once, a lethal combination for any teenager, Marco rose to his feet and propped it open with one hand, peering into the darkness.

"That's the meat storage!" Sensei called from the kitchen as Marco recoiled, outed as a snoop, "'Place was built on a tar pit, the hole stays nice and cold year 'round, so we keep the coolers down there. You can check it out if you want, it's pretty massive." Marco opened the door wider and the light spilling in from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling revealed a ladder leading into a gaping hole in the ground. He could feel the draft creep past him out the door.

"I can't clean, but I can climb down the rickety ladder into the giant hole in the ground?" Marco called over his shoulder.

"Meh." Was Sensei's only reply, almost definitely accompanied by a disinterested shrug.

"If I'm not back in ten-"

"I'll wait longer." Sensei shot back. The feeling of the phrase was comfortably threadbare in Marco's ears.

He let the door swing shut behind him and began to descend the ladder.

It was some time before Marco reached the ground. The tar pit had to be something on the order of thirty feet deep, and to say the ladder was lightly built and loosely fastened would have been a massive understatement. However when his feet finally hit dirt that seemed far too solid to belong in a tar pit, he turned and immediately spotted the massive cooler glowing with cool light in the distance. Full of uncharacteristically giddy excitement he chalked up to a mix of waning adrenaline and the familiar high of exhaustion, he approached it, marvelling at how its lip seemed to tower over his head.

"You weren't kidding about this thing, it's huge!" Marco called back up the hole. A reply, muffled by distance, sounded, but the distortion was too great to parse signal from noise. Marco shrugged and opted to carry on investigating the place, for lack of a better distraction. He had no flashlight to speak of, but a quick fish around his pockets turned up an old cell phone his parents insisted he carry with him when he go out.

It didn't have a flashlight app like most modern Smartphones, on account of it being a verifiably dumb flip phone, but setting the camera to record could steadily activate the flash at the peril of its tiny battery, and provide enough light to see by. Marco did exactly that, and began to trace the walls as they curved out and back, away from the point-source of light that spilled steadily down the shaft he had descended from.

The place was cavernous. He had expected a small hollow at best, but the area he was exploring began to feel more like a cathedral as he faced the phone skyward and realized that the light from the camera couldn't pierce all the way to the ceiling. He continued running his hand along the cool earth before him, contemplating turning back before he lost sight of the cooler and the ladder, when his hand struck something much harder than soil. He turned the light to it and saw a massive relief carving in an even, grey stone unusual in his region of California sprawling up and out from his hand in all directions. It depicted what looked like a man with a freakishly elongated head, a river, and a number of boats, before fading off on all sides into darkness.

He stumbled backward, shocked, and nearly tripped over a smaller mound of stones behind him. He whirled around and caught himself, gasping, as he realized that these, too, were no ordinary stones. A squat, circular structure lay beneath his palms, and upon closer inspection it sported a wooden lid on its upper face. Marco might have assumed that it was a table if he hadn't been able to smell a sweet moisture, akin to morning dew, leaking from between the planks.

Shaking, Marco raised the lid, and the sight that beset his eyes was unbelievable. Glowing, golden liquid thickly swirling and churning just below ground level. Not a capped off tar hole as he might have anticipated. The liquid seemed to call out to him, begging to be touched. It didn't appear metallic, and he couldn't sense any obvious heat emanating from it, so it seemed safe enough for how strange it looked.

As he lowered his hand towards it he could swear he saw the surface shift and bulge ever so lightly towards him.

Then it touched him, and his mind went blank.

It felt like being electrocuted. Every muscle fiber in his body suddenly solidified, and every tendon drew impossibly taut. He flew back from the well, whether from some force within or from his own legs straightening from a crouch with inhuman strength, he had no idea, but as he flew he felt the overwhelming sensations from his dream again, and in detail far more vivid than his groggy recollection in the park. He hit the ground an iron rod and shimmied there, elliptically, like a dropped pot lid until after a moment his muscles all relaxed simultaneously and he melted in a heap.

It took a moment for his vision to return, and for him to regain a sense of his surroundings, but the second he did he bolted before a thought, to the contrary or otherwise, could invade his still crystalline mind. He jammed the cell phone, clutched in his hand by a crushing grip, into his pocket, sprinted vertically up the ladder like a man possessed, and burst through both sets of doors separating him from the squall outside without so much as a word.

"HEY!" A disembodied voice carried from behind him, "HEY DIAZ, COME BACK!"

But he paid it no mind.

He sprinted, ignorant to the world, until he smelled the familiar scent of his bed, and the lull of unconsciousness stripped from him the burden of terror the well had instilled within him.


	2. CH002

**A/N: Welcome to chapter two everyone! I hope this style is a lot more to everyone's liking, I tried to keep things punchier and to the point this time around. I'm liking where this story is taking me so far, and I'm hoping to update frequently. So please let me know what you think, and enjoy!**

**CH002: The Student Becomes the Master**

Marco awoke like a fluorescent tube well past its prime, in fits and starts and flickers.

His head throbbed from the events of the previous evening in a way which suggested they had definitely not been figments of his imagination, like the musings leading up to his impromptu nap in the park. He swung from beneath charcoal-colored sheets, flannel which was too heavy for the heat of the summer mornings but too comfortable to change in the cool of the evenings, with groggy purpose.

The bathroom down the hall welcomed him with cool tile and porcelain, combative of the growing mugginess of the upper floors of his parents' home. It didn't take long for steam, and toothpaste, and the concentrated stench of deodorant to drive the moths from his mind.

In short order he re-emerged refreshed and absent a smell, reminiscent of wet dog, which had followed him in and still lingered in the hall, growing in the direction of his room. He chided himself for his carelessness and told himself, as he seemed to more and more often in recent years, that he really ought to stop just falling into bed at the end of the day.

He quickly returned to his own room and dressed from plain boxers in the still golden light diffusing through his dusty, brick-shorn window, and in so doing caught his reflection miming him in the mirror. He was whip thin, as he had been since time immemorial and in direct spite of his best efforts to the contrary, and his smooth, milk-coffee complexion blended into the ochre of his room in the dim ambiance.

However as he turned he found, to his pleasure, shoulders which were broader than he last remembered and the firm juts of slowly developing musculature peeking from beneath the folds of even more glacially receding baby fat. Or at least that's his mother had termed it. More likely it was her generous portion sizes, but he thought of himself as worldly enough to not tempt fate by complaining about them.

Starving kids in Africa and all.

However, he could, he thought, agonize over the fates of the less fortunate at his leisure in the afternoon, the purpose to which he had awoken beckoned him; a calling he had spent long years pursuing. The day he graduated as a student of the Tang Soo Do school of Karate, and earned his midnight blue belt, along with the rank of Dan.

His alarm pierced his ruminations shrilly, blaring as it wound past 8 am, but he swung an arm up to the nightstand on which it sat without so much as flinching, and chopped the snooze button with both open hand and practiced ease.

He finished dressing and descended creaking stairs at the end of the hall opposite the bathroom with a duffel slung over his shoulder, into a fog of aromas wafting from a packed breakfast table.

An infant girl with wispy hair a shade lighter than his own perched in a highchair at the far end, nearly obscured by a pair of figures crooning over her like mother hens. A broad, muscular man with whom Marco still shared few aspects of his physique beyond the pigmentation of his skin sat to her right, and a fiery woman who his slim figure took after far more noticeably to her left.

He saw their shoulders tense almost imperceptibly in time with the groan of the top step, but he chose to disregard the information and continued down unabashedly.

"Good morning Marco…" His mother trailed off, seemingly unsure of how to broach whatever topic she had in her mind. "Sleep well?"

"Like the dead," He replied, fearing that prolonged conversation would shatter the serene focus he had spent roughly the last hour cultivating. He began to heap eggs and bacon onto a plate, straining to reach them at the opposite end of the overlong table.

"You look terrible, son," His father interjected, "Are you sure?"

"Never more so in my life," he droned, never breaking eye contact with his meal, and began to eat ravenously. He saw, in his peripheral vision, the figures seated by his younger sister shift and knew without needing to look up that they were shooting each other concerned glances. He sighed, already anticipating a lecture, and set his fork down on the table forcefully enough to display his irritation, but not so forcefully as to imply anger; another smoothly calculated motion honed by practice.

"Alright," he huffed, "What is it?"

"Your mother and I," Rafael began, "Are just concerned about how late you've been staying out recently."

"We don't see you from sunup to sunset most days, and last night we thought you hadn't come home at all." Angie continued, emphatically. "We're worried about you."

"We know boys your age crave freedom, Marco, I remember when I was young the days I would spend playing under the sun with my friends. But that was under the sun." His father concluded, gesticulating with a spoon - dripping baby food - which nearly splattered Marco's plate as he wrenched it aside. "We know what happens in California during the night time."

Oh boy.

"Tell us honestly Marco, are you getting into…" His father whispered, leaning conspiratorially towards him, "The _drugs_?"

Marco raised a hand, slowly, to his temples and massaged them to maintain his composure. It never ceased to amaze him how out of touch his parents could be. Most of all when it came to topics such as "hip slang," or the things they ought to know about him. Thank god stupidity wasn't contagious, and only so heritable.

"No, dad," he replied, keeping a tight grip on the bridge of his nose to reign in a temper he could feel beginning to heat his ears and cheeks, "I am not, and have never been, into _the drugs._"

He allowed just enough venom to creep into his imitation of his father's voice to slacken the man's tight, but still remarkably jovial, expression a hair. He knew he shouldn't have, Rafael did his best with English and spoke with great fluency, but some turns of phrase still eluded him even after all his years in America. Linguistic failings could develop into something of a sore spot with him if prodded too directly or frequently, and his mother shot him a glare that implied she was fully aware of both this fact, and his intention.

"Alright then Marco, alcohol? Prescription drugs? Wild parties? What could you possibly be doing out so late every day now that school is out for the year?"

The frown on his father's face as he berated him betrayed disappointment and distrust, which hurt about as deeply as his own barb must have, but truth was often more embarrassing than fiction, and he didn't have the time or energy that morning to sit around and play "Guess the Delinquent Son's Vices."

"All of the above," he deadpanned over his shoulder as he straightened and carried his now empty plate to the sink, feeling his father's face sink in the strained silence filling the moment between hearing his words and recognizing the sarcasm dripping from them.

"MARCO UBALDO-"

"Later Dad." Marco cut him off as he turned sharply and padded to the heavy font door.

He heard a chair grind and strain against the carpet behind him as his father shot back in it, still bearing all the weight of his considerable frame. In response he scooped up his sneakers and dodged through the door in his socks, resolving to put them on once he was out of screaming distance of the house.

His father pounded up to the stoop and threw the door wide; but fast as he was, Marco's slim frame held the advantage in some regards. He was already out of sight around the corner by the time he heard it slam against the whitewashed exterior.

"Young man, when you get home tonight there will be a long discussion about this!"

Marco didn't doubt that for a second.

But he would leave the future to its inhabitants.

The time he'd wasted on breakfast had already left him cutting his arrival close, and he pulled his shoes on in step, barely pausing, as he broke into a jog in the direction of downtown.

* * *

He flung himself into the walk-up of the dojo a whirlwind of sweat and heat. Time had been tighter than he'd realized and by the time he'd stopped briefly, halfway, to check the cellphone he carried from the day prior three quarters of what he'd allotted had slipped his grasp. This, of course, meant that he would either have to sprint the remainder of the distance or catch a cab, and he'd had no cash.

Muscles screaming for respite groaned louder as he dropped roughly to the floor and removed his steaming shoes. He pointedly ignored the protests of his hamstrings, which only emboldened them, but he grit his teeth and soldiered to the back of the dojo, avoiding the mats, to towel off and change, and prepare for what was to come.

Years ago the circumstances around obtaining his red belt had been odd, if fairly unceremonious. Sensei Brantley had refused and redirected him at first, stalling him at the level of green belt for years of frustrating, dedicated practice. Through persistence, however, he learned that the reason behind his master's unwillingness had far more to do with embarrassment than Marco's own skill.

The man had never been a master in the first place. In trying to obtain his own red belt he had gotten the instructional tape he'd been using stuck in his VCR player and had never been able to finish his training. Upon learning this, at Marco's behest, the two had set out on a spiritual quest through the internet to try and find a copy of the tape, digital or otherwise, somewhere. But to no avail.

The endeavour had seemed hopeless until Marco had suggested disassembling the casing of the VCR player, which his Sensei had kept all those years, and surgically extracting the tape.

The process had taken a full day of intense operation, half of which had been spent driving around Echo Creek trying to find a place that would sell them scrubs on a Sunday afternoon - they had gotten waaaaaaaay deeper into the whole "VRC Surgery" metaphor than they should have. It had turned into a whole ordeal.

In the end they watched the tape, verified that they met the criteria, and sent off an included envelope with SD cards containing video of them performing the requisite hyung, karate forms, to the listed address. Their belts had arrived in the mail some days later.

However, as Marco pulled on his Gi and - now well worn - red belt he knew that this time things would be different. The last time they had merely been advancing a rank as students.

Today, they would both finally become masters.

That assurance pulled him from his seat, floated him out onto the mats, and violently burst, sending him crashing back to earth as he saw his Sensei wheeling out a very familiar looking VHS player and ancient tube TV on an AV cart.

"Are you kidding me!?" He exclaimed, incensed. "We're going for First Dan today, and it's just another stupid _tape_!?"

"'Fraid so, Marco," Brantley sighed. "The Grandmaster sent his regards when I mailed in to let the association know, but protocol's the same. Watch the tape, do the forms, send it back."

Marco's hand went to his temples for the second time that morning. It seemed that his life was determined to be nothing more than a series of enigmas, disappointing or otherwise.

Steeling himself for what was to come, Marco stepped forward, squaring up to the AV cart as though it were the final, validating trial he had so desperately hoped for. Sensei reached forward and pressed the play button, and as he did everything went dark.

Marco sprung back into a stance, prepared for an attack to come from any angle, when a spotlight flared to life at the far corner of the dojo, illuminating the entrance. There, he noted with irritation that only grew by the second, stood a real trial in the smug form of Jeremy Birnbaum poised next to a large, hooded figure obscured by a floor-length red cloak.

"Sup losers." Not a question, but a statement. "Heard you were going for your black belts today, figured I'd come watch."

"Blue." Marco corrected.

"What?"

"The First Dan belts are midnight blue, Jeremy, not black." Marco hissed, teeth gritted, "You'd know that if you ever showed up for class."

"Oh, right, the whole "Black implies the student has nothing left to learn" schtick." Jeremy waved away his barb. "I had them make mine with Vantablack specifically because of how perfect my Karate is."

"Why you little-" Marco began, but Sensei cut him off.

"Jeremy, so nice to see you. It's been a while. Who's your intimidating friend?"

The figure slowly peeled back the hood of his cloak, revealing a mountain of dark, curly hair and a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses. Marco cocked an eyebrow in confusion, but Sensei gasped and immediately dropped to his knees in seiza beside him. He glanced down into glistening brown eyes, which seemed to be begging for Marco to join him.

Marco begrudgingly obliged and then leaned over, close enough that Jeremy wouldn't be able to hear him.

"Who the hell is _that_?"

"_Grandmaster_"

"What?"

"The _Grandmasterrrrrrrr_," Sensei rasped into his ear, suddenly short of breath. Marco gave him a pitying look, wondering where he would have ever seen the man before to know that if all of his training had been via VHS, but chose to leave well enough alone. The man before them certainly wasn't flooring Marco as much as his teacher, and definitely wasn't the same one from the tapes.

Granted, the ones they were using had to be at least fifteen years old.

It was a wonder the address they had sent their red belt videos to had worked at all.

Marco returned his gaze to the duo at the door. "Why'd the two of you really come? Sensei was just telling me that the Grandmaster didn't seem terribly interested in watching the ceremony today."

Tough to call a TV and two people a ceremony, but it lent the phrase some weight, so he went with it. Sensei Brantley, all the while, was glaring daggers at him. No doubt for speaking so informally in the man's presence.

"Well, turns out old, washed up karate schools really _really _like it when people make large, charitable donations out of the blue. Who knew right?" Jeremy snickered,

"The Grandmaster here insisted on thanking me somehow, and I mentioned that you two _happened _to be assessing for First Dan today, and that I _happened _to be coming to watch. He practically begged me to let him tag along and _personally _assess my friends." The venom in his voice told Marco all he needed to know about what the little weasel had planned. But before he could counter Jeremy, something mewled beside him.

"_Thaaaaaaaank yoooooouuuuuuuuu!_" Marco looked over just in time to watch the teacher he'd respected for much of his young life slink up to the boy's feet, head bowed and hands clasped. His upper lip curled in disgust.

"Both of us truly appreciate the incredibly generous offer," Marco carefully proposed, "But I'm sure the Grandmaster has better things to do with his time than watch a couple of red belts try for blue."

He desperately hoped to diffuse the situation and give the man in the robe any and all chances to back out of watching them. Jeremy had always been a gargantuan prick, but when his teenage hormones had begun to hit on his eleventh birthday it had turned him into a true terror. These days the kid wanted nothing more than to laugh as the world burned around him, as many teenagers occasionally do, but Jeremy's problem was that he'd long had the money and influence necessary to realize and become addicted to that feeling.

He _would _try to pull some stunt to sabotage them, or at least Marco, in the middle of their ceremony in an attempt to disgrace them in front of the head of their school. He was willing to bet at least $650 on it.

"Actually," Jeremy countered, "This is exactly what he's supposed to be doing with his time. Tell 'em big man."

"It is true." The Grandmaster replied in eloquent, booming bass, "I had grown complacent until Mr. Birnbaum showed me the error of my ways. Even after all these years, for students of my school to be so generous, I simply had to meet the Sensei who instilled such virtue in his pupils."

Were those actually tears in his eyes?

The man wiped at them stoically with the hem of his robe.

Christ.

Jeremy had the poor bastard hook, line, and sinker.

Marco groaned quietly as he screwed his eyes shut and wracked his brain for words which would prevent the unpleasantness headed his way, but could come up with none. One silent moment bled into two, and then three, and finally the Grandmaster clapped his hands together and proclaimed that they ought to begin the ceremony as Jeremy smiled cruelly just beyond his line of sight.

Sensei stood, eyes never leaving the man. He walked backward towards, bowed onto, and entered the mats in the dojo proper, flicked the lights back on from a second switch, and moved to push the button on the VHS player to resume the tape.

But the Grandmaster waved him off.

"There's no need for that," He exclaimed, "I will preside." He bowed onto the mats himself and plopped down cross legged near their edge in the center of the fighting area. Jeremy joined him, but showed no such respect for the facilities, and barely kicked off his shoes before skipping onto the floor in sock-feet. Marco could feel a vein pulsing in his forehead.

"Marco, are you planning on joining us?" Sensei shot him another pointed glare. Marco sighed for what felt like the thousandth time that day and pushed himself to his feet, absorbing and refracting Sensei's scowl at Jeremy through his own eyes as he bowed deliberately. He knelt down opposite the pair and awaited the stranger's instructions.

"Which hyung would you like to see performed first, Grandmaster?" Sensei prostrated himself before the man, forfeiting all of the little remaining dignity he had retained. A display which even earned a disapproving sneer from Jeremy. The Grandmaster, however, seemed unfazed.

"I would normally request the Bassai or Nianchi Cho Dan," the Grandmaster mused, stroking his chin. He seemed more knowledgeable than Marco might have otherwise given him credit for, he got the forms right at least. "But given the special nature of the occasion I think I would like to see something a bit more sporting."

"Sporting, sir?" Sensei glanced up, confused.

"Yes, I think a match showcasing both of your levels of skill would befit an occasion such as this, and what are occasions for if not shaking up tradition!" He sounded like the sort of man whose mind would not deviate once made, and it seemed Jeremy was determined not to let the moment slip by.

"Wonderful idea sir!" He exclaimed. "Why don't we spice things up a bit further. As a First Dan myself, I think I might provide a useful point of comparison when judging their worthiness. I propose a round robin!"

So that was his ploy. The pipsqueak wasn't even going for his usual subterfuge this time; he had resolved to meddle directly.

A fatal error, Marco was sure.

He smirked at Jeremy, and was delighted by the look of confusion which clouded his smug face.

"That sounds _perfect _Jeremy! I second the motion."

The confusion morphed into concern as Marco squared up to a game he thought he'd been the only one playing. Sensei managed to grunt something that sounded like affirmation, and the Grandmaster clapped his hands once more.

"Then a round robin it shall be. We'll draw straws to see who fights first!" The man produced a trio of short wooden dowels which looked almost like sticks of incense from beneath his robe, two which were blood red on the bottom third and the other plain. "The two who draw red shall be the first to fight."

The three gathered around and closed their eyes as the Grandmaster shuffled the sticks in his palm, and closed it around them. He held them out and they each grasped the end of one, pulling sharply after a three count.

Marco and Sensei both gulped deeply as they stared down at their selections.

They would be facing off first.


	3. CH003

**A/N: Hi again everyone! I wanted to wait to post the next chapter until just after the finale, so I could see how the story wrapped up, but I overshot my deadline by about a week. Life gets in the way and all. Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of the way things wrapped up, and I think it just highlighted the messiness of season 4 as a whole, but it has inspired me to continue writing and make a more fully realized world in the place of more episodes. So get ready for more (hopefully) weekly updates! I also haven't forgotten about all of the portal stuff I brought up in the first chapter, and we'll be on track to magic and mystery shortly, this is just something I wanted to explore first for the purposes of characterization and demonstration. So without further ado, enjoy chapter 3!**

**003: Tournament Arc**

Student and master stared one another down in the center of the mats, rigid and cautious. The two had fought before in sparring matches in a manner which was sporting, educational even, but never in a serious bout. Marco swallowed sharply as he looked his teacher up and down in a manner which was uncomfortable and unfamiliar to him.

Searching for a weakness to exploit.

He saw Brantley's eyes flick over him, doing the same, and steeled himself. They were in this now.

He spared a glance towards Jeremy, lounging smugly in the corner of the dojo bleachers with the Grandmaster as he prepared to judge them. The boy caught his gaze and held it, a pronounced smirk broadening as he did. He gave Marco a patronizing wink and mouthed, 'Good Luck,' before rolling his eyes and turning his attention bemusedly back to the man meditating to his left.

Marco felt rage lingering from the morning rekindle within him, threatening to catch and flare, but he smothered its flames quickly and unceremoniously and tore his eyes away. The mats were not a place for anger; fighting with anything other than a clear head was a recipe for disaster. He had learned that lesson intimately in his last fight with Jeremy years prior. He shivered at the thought of the unforgiving stiffness beneath the boy's gloves. Brass knuckles or not, he could have taken the little shit easily if he'd just-

"Alright, let's get this thing started!"

His thoughts were interrupted by an enthusiastic cry as the Grandmaster sprung to his feet and bowed onto the mats, apparently finished whatever mental preparation he had been engaged in. Marco shook his head to clear it, with limited success.

"I hereby declare this special match between Marco Diaz,"

He looked towards Marco expectantly, and Marco smiled nervously in return.

"And Jamesson Brantley,"

Marco cocked an eyebrow, realizing in that moment that he had never actually heard the man's name spoken aloud before. He glanced at Sensei, who appeared to have been shaken from his stupor by the mention of his full name, and who was beginning to flush a bright scarlet. There pas probably a reason he never used his first name, but Marco couldn't fathom it. Jamesson wasn't _that _bad.

"To be a declaration of their skill in the ancient and sacred art of Karate, by the authority granted to me by the Tang Soo Do school, and to be judged in accordance with my own skill and rank, recognized and verified by the same."

Very official sounding. The ceremonious words caught in Marco's throat and only served to make the act of swallowing more difficult than it had been previously. Brantley had gained control of his blush and was now stone-faced, no doubt finishing his own mental preparation for what was to follow.

"Junbi!"

The call to readiness. Marco and the man who, up to this point, had been his master and teacher, stepped up to the edges of the red square in the center of the mats. They straightened their Dobog, very similar to a Japanese Gi, and adjusted their belts. The two men breathed deeply and locked eyes, and Marco saw that the man before him was no longer any of the things he had cherished. There was a hardness there, the resolution of a man who was determined to become an obstacle in his path. A look he had seen before many times, in many eyes, from the position in which he stood.

As the Grandmaster drew a deep breath and prepared to start the match, Marco mirrored the man's conviction, and readied his stance. They sprung at each other, as the Grandmaster's voice split the muggy afternoon air, changed people. No longer friends, or student and pupil, the two clashed in the center of that red square with the steele of rivals.

"SIJAK!"

Brantley struck first, sending a wicked kick in the direction of Marco's guard hand. Karate was different from other martial arts in many ways; in a grappling sport such as Judo a bout almost always begins with two opponents coming to grips, literally and figuratively. The first person to get a good hold on the other would seize a strong advantage in the flurry of activity which inevitably followed. In Karate, however, there was no grip fighting, so a match begins with one party seizing the first opportunity presented.

Brantley didn't wait for Marco to give him one.

His leg sprung out and Marco sprung back, the top of the man's foot glancing against his forearm and smarting, but he pressed the advantage without pause. A swift spinning jump into a reverse heel strike followed, carried by Brantley's momentum, and this time Marco had no more room behind him to leap out of the way and avoid it.

Marco felt butterflies burst to vigorous life in his gut as he dropped below the kick with perhaps an inch to spare, judging by the way Brantley's foot grazed his hair.

He fell into a sturdy triangle position -a palm and both feet splayed close to the ground- and kicked off with his rearmost foot to sweep his legs low, attempting to take advantage of his opponent's one-legged stance.

He was seen through immediately.

Brantley allowed the momentum of his second kick to carry him off of his feet and over Marco's advance, jumping into a third consecutive strike. He aimed a spinning roundhouse diagonally as he landed well inside of Marco's guard.

To someone less experienced a strike with such momentum could seem downright lethal, but the curse of that proximity could be quickly transformed into a blessing if one understood a thing or two about leverage. Marco grinned and felt his butterflies alight once more within him as he extended his outside arm and blocked the kick high up Brantey's leg, between the knee and the groin, bracing his wrist with his free hand.

This took the man by surprise.

The awkward positioning carried his momentum around too far, throwing him off his otherwise impeccable balance and leaving him scrambling.

Marco, having turned the tables and now inside his rival's own guard, pushed the advantage back at him. He launched off his back foot once more, sending a series of swift jabs into the man's gut.

Brantley sputtered and jumped back, closing his stance and re-centering himself, but hesitated to move further as he sized up his former student with new respect. He looked genuinely impressed at the prospect of Marco having so skilfully drawn first blood.

They stood still for a moment, probing the other's defenses with flitting eyes. His Sensei's ironclad guard had returned the instant he'd hit the ground, and Marco was struggling to find anything to exploit. It seemed that his opponent was willing to wait him out in this endeavour, however, and after a moment he saw a hand begin to raise in his periphery near the edge of the mats. Standing still for too long would invite a reset from the match's judge, and being forced back to their corners for indecisiveness would be an embarrassing loss of face from a pair striving for the right to call themselves masters.

Marco lunged forward and stepped in low just as the hand was reaching its precipice, and saw it falter and retract as he moved.

Brantley seemed to be expecting this, however, and moved with him. He sensed, rather than saw, the corners of his opponent's mouth turn up in his periphery, and clenched his teeth. The bastard had baited him.

Sensei's front leg swung towards his own, his weight now firmly on his back foot, and in the deep stance Marco held he stood no chance of evasion. Marco placed his weight on his front leg, forced himself up and forward, and felt a sharp sting as the the two connected. If he couldn't prevent the leg being swept, he would at least make it unpleasant for the both of them.

Brantley winced, and Marco forced himself inside his guard with the remainder of his momentum, landing another small series of body blows low on his torso.

Brantley backpedaled, and Marco followed shortly after, letting enough space open up for a 180 degree horizontal spinning kick to the gut. It was no mistake that he continued targeting the same area, and he could see the damage beginning to compound in the expression Brantley wore as he took another sluggish step back.

Marco pressed him.

And felt a sharp pain in his own abdomen.

His eyes flicked downward, and he saw Brantley's fist buried in his Solar Plexus. The man's face betrayed little of the pain it had moments earlier, and the grin was back. Baited again.

It took a moment to register the pain; he jumped reflexively backward, and it caught him mid air like a long pass in a football game. He landed heavily, bringing his arms up half to close his guard on the now tender area and half to cradle it, and forced bile back down his throat as Brantley shot forward.

He forced a relentless onslaught on Marco, sending a flurry of punches and kicks at him from all angles, most of which he blocked; though a few landed heavily on his body's periphery. He bided his time as Brantley exerted himself, sweat beading on his forehead as he peacocked for the Grandmaster. He had to admit, the barrage was an impressive display of skill. Sensei fluidly dove from punch to punch, and peppered in as many techniques as he could think of to try and open up a hole through which to finish the bout.

But such a display was also wasteful, rather than relying on pain to do his work for him and targeting Marco repeatedly near his shallow bones or fragile joints, he was swinging wildly. Before long his breathing grew heavier, and like a boxer backed into a corner Marco burst through him when he saw a slow, wide heel strike sailing in from the wings. He lunged off his back foot and landed a clean blow to the man's chest, knocking him off balance.

He pressed further as the kick still trailing in from the wings began to falter and sink, and landed another clean, forceful hit near the collarbone.

Brantley was well over his balance point now, and he knew it. Marco saw his face cloud as he tried to recover at the last moment, but he had overleveraged himself. He fell loudly on his back and Marco followed him down, landing crouched across his abdomen with a fist raised to strike his throat.

"GEUMAN!"

Marco relaxed as the Grandmaster stood from the cross legged position he had assumed on the edge of the fighting area. It wasn't exactly traditional, but neither was any of this, and he was the boss, so what could you do.

"Excellent work, both of you!"

The match had lasted, in total, perhaps thirty seconds. But to the two of them it had seemed like an eternity. Marco allowed himself to breathe for the first time since they had begun, and a clarity that he savored filled his mind in time with the air inflating his lungs. He never felt quite so alive as he did after a good match. Whether it was the intense aerobicity of it, the oxygen rushing back in afterward to replace what he'd used up and lifting him high above himself in the process, or something else entirely.

He didn't much care.

It felt excellent.

He helped Brantley to his feet, backing off and extending a hand downwards, and the two returned to their sides of the red square.

"An inspiring bout to be sure! Both fought hard, but the winner by submission is Marco Diaz!" The Grandmaster raised an open hand in the direction of Marco's side of the mats as he made his declaration. Marco and Brantley bowed to each other. They moved to back out of the square, but the Grandmaster raised a hand to halt them.

"What sort of event would this be if we ended it so early?" Marco tensed at the question. He had thought a single fight would be too easy, but he'd hoped he'd be able to conserve more strength for the brat still in the bleachers.

"Junbi! This will be best two of three!"

The two stepped back up to the square and bowed once more.

"Sijak!"

The bout that followed was more drawn out. Both fighters had exhausted much of their energy in the excitement of the first match, and the second quickly became a war of attrition. Several agonizing seconds of squaring off were followed by nearly 30 of jabs and feints as neither took the initiative to press the other. Marco peppered some snapping kicks and heel strikes into his usual style to try and catch his opponent off guard, but to no avail.

They came together like feral cats around the one minute mark and the brief, furious exchange ended with Marco on his back and Brantley on top of him, their positions from minutes earlier reversed. The Grandmaster made the second announcement as they returned to their sides of the dojo, but Marco paid the man no mind. Sensei looked like he was over the moon receiving the Grandmaster's praise, but the only thing on his own mind was catching his breath.

He drew air deeply into his lungs as the third bout began, and surged forward the second the Grandmaster's hand began to fall. Brantley's eyes widened and he moved, too slowly, to block the strike. The final match lasted moments, the sort of thing you see put up in a compilation on the internet. Marco nailed him hard in the center of the chest with a spearing strike, which he collapsed into a brutal elbow to the gut, and finished things with a standing snap kick to the jaw through the opening he'd made.

Sensei dropped like a sack of potatoes and Marco crouched over his prone form to claim victory. The man beneath him came to quickly and Marco helped him to his shaky feet. The Grandmaster quickly shut a mouth he likely hadn't realized had fallen agape, and stepped forward to announce Marco's victory.

"A masterful display by Marco Diaz, the very definition of that old adage, to 'be like water.' Winner by surging knockout!"

Marco turned after the two bowed and shot Jeremy a glare which he hoped adequately conveyed an intense 'You're next' vibe, but the rat lounging in the bleachers had the nerve to look unimpressed.

The four re-convened there and the Grandmaster had Marco and Brantley draw straws once more; the recipient of the red-tipped one would be the first to face Jeremy.

As the victor of the match, Marco selected first.

On the one hand, he wanted to cream the little bastard when he was fresh just to prove he could. The prospect of taking the pipsqueak 3-0 directly after fighting another hard match was certainly appealing.

But he also wanted to see exactly what two years of private training bought before he stepped in the ring with the kid. It had been so long he couldn't even remember Jeremy's style.

His fingers, after some deliberation, finally landed on the leftmost of the two dowels. He drew a sharp breath and tugged.

Blank.

Brantley shook out his hands and cracked his neck, preparing himself, and Jeremy rose from his seat stretching.

"Well old man, time to see if we need to put you in a home yet."

Brantley just chuckled.

"I'd like to see you crack wise with a mouth full of my mats, kid."

There was definitely an animosity there. One does not take well to being abandoned by one's best, well … , _highest paying _student without a word, only for him to show up unannounced years later as a wannabe dojo buster. This would likely be personal for Brantley.

"Junbi!"

Marco believed that passion might carry his teacher through the match as the two stepped up to the square, and Marco glanced down to position himself as he sat heavily on the bleachers to observe. But no sooner had his ass hit the metal than Brantley's hit the floor. He heard the noise first, and jerked his head violently upward only to be greeted by Jeremy's outstretched leg taking up the space his Sensei's throat ought to. He hadn't even heard the command to begin, his leg must have been moving before the Grandmaster even finished speaking, and the sound of the strike had drowned out his voice.

Jeremy glanced over at a horrified Marco and shot him a look which perfectly reflected the feeling he had attempted to convey earlier as he slowly and deliberately lowered his leg.

"He who strikes first, wins."

He walked back to his side of the square without offering Brantley even a glance, spun, and bowed as the Grandmaster announced his victory. Marco opened his mouth to respond to the barb, fuming, but Sensei held out a hand to stop him as he rose from the floor without a hint of emotion.

"Drop it, Diaz."

The two squared up again, and Marco simmered on the bench. He had no room to complain about the unfairness of Jeremy's technique, after all he had done basically the same thing moments earlier. It was the blatant disrespect the little cretin showed with his every action that really got his blood boiling.

Jeremy moved to strike first again as soon as the command to begin had been issued, but Brantley was ready for him this time.

The two exchanged brief, forceful blows as Brantley blocked Jeremy's first strike and countered with a kick of his own, but despite his stature Jeremy seemed anchored to the ground. Marco would have liked to claim he'd had magnets embedded in his feet, or gecko skin transplanted onto them, but as he watched he found himself begrudgingly admitting that the two fought on equal footing based on skill alone. As much as he hated Jeremy, making him out to be more of a cheat than he was could land him in serious trouble in his own match.

He bit his lip and resolved to observe the boy's technique carefully.

The bout resolved after a minute of intermittent exchanges with a submission victory by Brantley. It was hard won due to strong footwork by Jeremy, and he had to push through blows aimed with guided precision for all of the same spots Marco had damaged prior, but he persevered with a strong kick to the abdomen which slipped through Jeremy's guard and put him on the ground for just long enough.

Brantley offered Jeremy a hand up, but he slapped it away and rose himself.

"No need for that kid, you fight well," he offered as he returned to his side of the square. He looked a lot calmer than he had before, and he was even giving Jeremy the same look he'd given Marco earlier. What a despicable traitor.

Jeremy didn't deserve his respect, he deserved a beatdown.

"No thanks to you," Jeremy muttered as he staggered back to his own side and composed himself. The look on Sensei's face soured a bit, remorsefully, as he seemed to contemplate the boy's words. Which only sickened Marco even more.

"I suppose so…" Brantley trailed off as the two stepped up and prepared for their final bout. The Grandmaster shouted his assent and absconded, but this time neither of the two came out the gate swinging. They bounced on the balls of their feet for a moment, sizing each other up, and proceeded to probe the other's defenses carefully. Marco wondered at that for a moment, but then rationalized that the careful armistice must be a manifestation of the strength of each of their wills.

Both knew that this match was for all the marbles, and neither wanted to throw it by carelessly stepping into the other. Marco would have expected such consideration from his teacher, what surprised him was Jeremy. He wouldn't have thought the boy capable of caring about the domination of his former teacher in any capacity deeper than crass sadism, but it seemed that his appearance that day was not a simple act of vanity after all. Marco would have to remember that.

The uneasy peace between the two in the ring did not last long, however, and after a few flashes in the pan the match concluded with Jeremy's victory; a massive strike to the knee which took Sensei to the ground.

Jeremy looked down at the man with something Marco could have almost labelled disappointment, had he been at all convinced the kid was capable of feeling it, as he turned on his heel and marched back to his side of the ring, awaiting the Grandmaster's deliberation. Brantley followed suit, and the Grandmaster wrapped the match neatly up with a declaration of Jeremy's win. Marco glanced at him, expecting his expression to have lightened some, but his face remained clouded. He almost felt bad for the kid, who looked as though he had been searching long and hard for something and, convinced he had finally found it, found himself gaslighted instead.

But Marco couldn't afford to spare any empathy for the twerp, and Sensei seemed to share his sentiments as he limped over to the bleachers to sit.

He laid a hand on Marco's shoulder to support himself as the two in the ring stood awaiting him, and spoke quietly.

"Give 'em hell Diaz. Show the kid what he's been missing."

"Hai, Sensei."

Marco glared at Jeremy as he helped Brantley sit, but Jeremy still would not return his gaze. Once he had his teacher situated, he straightened his uniform and walked back to the mats, bowing on.

The two rivals stepped up to either side of the red square as the Grandmaster raised his hand and called them to the ready. Marco allowed a contradictory mix of adrenaline and serenity to fill him, and quiet his mind, as he readied himself for what was to come.

It was finally his turn to crush the gloomy insect that had infested their dojo.


End file.
